There’s been a few articles here and there in the craft sphere about free quilt patterns that I’ve been mulling over. I have my own opinions, but I was curious how my readers felt about the issue. So I decided to ask them! Here’s an excerpt from my most recent newsletter:

I’ve read a few articles about free content on blogs (free downloadable patterns, in particular) and how it is hurting the quilting industry. What say you?

As you know, I have both – a pattern shop and some patterns that are free to download. The latter help me get my name out there (via Pinterest and Facebook sharing) and get people signed up to my email list (where I can nurture a relationship with them). It also offers a risk-free way (for customers) to check out my patterns before buying.

But on the other hand, is it conditioning people to expect patterns for free? Is it encouraging a lack of respect for intellectual property ?

If a business site offers free content, do you accept they have to make money some other way (adverts, sponsored posts, affiliate links)? Or does it kind of offend you?

I spend a lot of timing thinking about these things, but I’m not sure if the average quilter does too? Are you interested in how a quilt blog stays afloat, what costs are involved? I understand if you don’t – there are many things I buy that I don’t feel compelled to know the ‘how” of its creation/business model!

Let me know your thoughts (just reply to this email). I’m keen to hear what consumers think of this issue. The quilting industry needs to serve its customers, but without killing off small businesses.

I received 94 replies and the majority understood that a business has to make money. They were very supportive and advised me to keep doing what I was doing (thank you!).

There were also a few replies that showed not everyone understands what goes into running a craft blog/pattern store, especially the costs incurred by owners. So I thought I’d outline some of the details behind the running of Bonjour Quilts, in an effort to show why pattern designers need to make money somewhere in order to survive. And let’s be honest – it’s better that they thrive, not “just survive”, because just surviving gets tiring very quickly and encourages business abandonment.

So let’s have a look at what it costs me to run my online business. And then I’ll show you how easy it is to support your favourite quilt blogs/quilt pattern designers.

Costs to Run a Quilt Blog – Annual Overheads

Although my blog started on a free blogging platform (blogspot), I now have a website (created for me by Teresa at A Fearless Venture) with a custom pattern shop that uses Sendowl. I worked hard to recoup those set-up costs last year so I’m only listing recurring annual costs here (in $US). But do keep in mind I’ve put several thousand dollars into my website and pattern shop over the past few years.

There is no line item for the cost of my time here. I’ll get to that later.

Add it all up and I have at the very minimum costs of $2400. With an average pattern price of $10, I need to sell 240 patterns every year to break even on my overheads.

But Bonjour Quilts doesn’t exist just to be a website – it has to produce patterns. So let’s have a look at those costs too.

PDF Quilt Pattern Production Costs.

Firstly, I can’t vouch for others’ costs, only my own. I know that there are cheaper ways (beware ye the risks!) of doing things, but this is what works for me. It’s important to me to produce a quality pattern that I have sewn myself and that has been technically edited by an industry professional. Do mistakes still occur? Sometimes. But I’m doing my best and learning all the time.

So – here’s an estimate of what it costs me to produce a pattern (all amounts are $US).

Graphic design – $200 – 300 depending on whether the template has already been set up (first pattern is most expensive).

Sample materials – $200

Please note that this doesn’t take into account the time it takes me to design the quilt, sew the sample, photograph the sample and edit the photographs. It also doesn’t take long-arming into account, as I probably send out only 30% of my quilts.

So the costs that come out of my pocket to create a quilt pattern are $500 – $650 (remembering that this doesn’t cover any of my time). Taking a $10 pattern price again for ease, you can see a pattern has to sell at least 50 – 65 copies to break even.

PDF vs Paper Patterns

Several replies to my newsletter question asked why PDF patterns weren’t cheaper than paper copies. After all, isn’t the main cost of a pattern the paper it’s printed on? I hope the annual overhead and pattern production costs I’ve outlined above show that this isn’t the case. A pattern, whether it’s paper or PDF, needs to cover production and overhead costs, as well as the intellectual work of the author. The couple of dollars it takes to print the pattern are a small portion of this cost.

There’s also another factor that needs to be considered in pattern pricing – selling wholesale.

Wholesale Pattern Sales

I’m a little on the fence with wholesale pattern selling. If you’re a quilt pattern designer having success in this area I’d love to hear from you!

Selling wholesale directly is quite simple. A quilt shop contacts you and purchases the patterns at half price. They then sell the patterns in their shop at the recommended retail price. This is why it’s important for a pattern designer to sell their patterns, both paper and PDF, at the same price. No quilt shop will want to carry your patterns if they know you’re offering the PDF version at a cheaper price (and rightly so!). The quilt shops would then have a whole bunch of patterns they can’t sell, or have to sell at close to cost price. So this is one reason why PDF and paper need to be priced the same – so it remains attractive to quilt shops to carry your patterns.

Selling wholesale through a distributor is another option. The distributor takes another cut of the pattern price, but the upside is they’ve a huge number of quilt shops on their books and can expose them to your patterns. The downside is they’ve a huge number of pattern designers on their books and your patterns won’t receive any special sales treatment. Distributors offer a service and have their own costs – it’s up to each quilt pattern designer to decide if that works for their business.

Here’s an indicative outline of the cost breakdown when selling wholesale through a distributor.

The important thing to remember is that the quilt pattern designer PAYS FOR THE PATTERN PRINTING AND “PRINTER TO DISTRIBUTOR” POSTAGE.

Printing costs depend on how long your pattern is (more pages = more $) and how many you order. (Larger print runs are cheaper $ per pattern, but if your pattern doesn’t sell well then you’re stuck with a lot of money tied up in stock you can’t sell). Pattern printing costs can therefore vary greatly, but mine run in the $1.50 – $2 range per pattern. As you can see, there’s not much money left over from the $3.5 that goes to the designer in a wholesale distribution model.

When a distributor places a bulk order, the cost to send those patterns to the distributor is around $10-$20. It’s actually possible (if you have a paper hungry pattern or the distributor order isn’t very big) to LOSE MONEY when you sell paper patterns! This is why it’s really important to minimise the number of pages in a pattern. This is naturally at odds with a designer’s desire to give you as much instruction as possible. It’s quite conflicting!

So to recap – pattern costs are those directly related to producing the pattern and the overheads of the business.

To sell paper patterns, the designer has to be able to cover the printing and the pattern/overhead costs with the profits within a wholesale distributor model. Patterns sold for less than $10 make this very, very difficult.

To ensure quilt shops continue to stock paper patterns, the PDF patterns have to remain at the same price as paper. This ensures quilt shops aren’t undercut and helps offset the very narrow profit margins for the designer in the wholesale distributor model.

I hope this helps to show why designers can’t offer the patterns any cheaper than we currently do.

Additional Costs

There are other costs that aren’t captured above. One of these are fees. Paypal, Stripe (credit card payment provider) and bank transfers bleed small amounts of money away from each sale amount. 3% here, 2% there, bank exchange rates for those that don’t live in the US. They all add up to eat into profit margins. Once I change my shop over to Shopify, they will start taking a cut of my sales too. I’m not mad about it – it’s a cost of doing business.

What else? Quilting tools, fabric, rotary cutter blades, long arm quilting, thread, sewing machine repairs and servicing, electricity. Taxes – can’t forget those. Or the accountant. If you have a booth at Market, that’s a big expense (especially if travelling from Australia) Oh, and bar codes. If you sell paper patterns, you have to pay for bar codes. You get the drift – businesses have lots of costs.

Education is another expense that is really important for small business owners. Unless you’ve come across from a comparable employment category, you’ll be learning how to run a small business as you go. It’s important to me to take courses through the year to try and improve how I do things. I’m a member of an online business community and I’ve also taken several “one off” online courses to target particular topics – Sticky Search Engine Optimisation ($149), Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers Master Cse* ($297), Pinterest Traffic Avalanche* ($197). It’s a continuous process of learning and making myself a better business owner, and it’s a process I really enjoy, actually!

Here’s the big one – the additional cost that is really important. As you saw above, none of the costs listed so far cover my work, or the hours of time that I spend in the business.

I Need to Pay Myself a Wage

The average wage in Australia is AUD$85,000 (this is US$60,000). I’d need to sell 6,000 patterns (at $10) a year to make a US$60,000 wage.

The median wage in the US is $45,000. (Given the cost of living in Australia is higher, the two are roughly comparable.) I’d need to sell 4,500 patterns a year to earn that wage.

And I’d have to sell them directly myself, as PDFs, not as paper patterns through a distributor. That’s a tall order!

(Funnily enough, I have 13,000 people on my email list. If everyone on my list bought just one $10 pattern every 2 years, I’d be supported!)

This is why those in the quilting industry have to work hard at developing multiple sources of income – books, courses, workshops, fabric design, offering advertising, using affiliate links, accepting sponsorship deals to try and earn a living wage. They really have to hustle!

You can probably guess I’m not making a living wage from Bonjour Quilts. I am in the black (not in the red), but it will be a while before I can build up the income streams and newsletter list that can support me in that manner. I’ve another job, one that pays me a wage and my superannuation (401K for US readers) so I’m able to contribute to my family while building Bonjour on the sidelines. It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy it.

How You Can Support Your Favourite Quilt Pattern Designer

So you’ve seen the bad news – how about some good news? The good news is that it’s really, really easy to support your favourite quilt pattern designers. You can support them with money, or with actions, or with both.

Support with Money

+Hands down the best thing you can do is purchase a PDF pattern directly from the quilt pattern designer. That puts the most money into their pocket. And the great thing is that it’s an environmentally friendly way to support someone. There’s no trees being chopped down or ink being used. If you don’t get around to making the pattern you can be happy you’ve supported someone with none of the guilt that unused physical products generate.

+If you can’t buy a pattern (PDF or paper) from the designer, the next best thing is to buy their pattern from a quilt store. The quilt pattern designer, quilt store and the distributor’s families will thank you for the support.

+If your favourite designer has a book, a special ruler or designs fabric, purchasing directly from them (rather than through a middle man or Amazon) will pass on the most profit to them.

+If you can, purchase through the affiliate links on your favourite designer’s website. (Only things you were planning to buy anyway – I don’t like the idea of people buying things they don’t really need just to help someone with a commission.) That said, the commissions via affiliate links are very small. But they can add up over time and contribute a small bump of income to a blogger, at absolutely no cost to you the buyer. Amazon is going to pay someone a commission, so it might as well be your favourite designer, right?

Support with Action

I have many newsletter readers who have never purchased a pattern from me. The majority of non-purchasers are people on fixed incomes who say they would like to support me with a purchase, but unfortunately can’t. Luckily, there’s plenty of other things they can do to help.

Even if these readers can’t afford my patterns, they can help to get my work in front of others who can. There are millions of quilters out there, and some of them would love to purchase from me – if only they knew my patterns existed! This is where you can help your favourite quilt pattern designer. Get their name out in front of new readers so they’ve a chance to connect with new customers.

+Pin their photographs to Pinterest. Pinterest is a fantastic traffic generator for blogs and such a great place for people to find new things.

+Post their blog posts and new pattern listings to your Facebook feed, or share it in quilting Facebook Groups (if it’s within the rules). A recommendation is a powerful thing.

+Like their posts on Facebook and Instagram – this encourages both programs to show the photos to other similar users.

+If you’ve quilting friends who you think would enjoy a quilt designer’s newsletter, forward the email on to them with a recommendation. It would be great if you could help recruit new readers for them.

+If you see someone online in a quilting forum or a Facebook Group (or in real life at a guild or quilting circle) trying to source a free copy of a paid pattern, please speak up and defend that quilt pattern designer’s copyright. The more people that speak up against pattern theft, the closer we’ll come to stamping it out.

Back to the Free Patterns…

There is a place for freebies. They attract new people to quilting. I believe being able to download a free beginners pattern and give quilting a try opens the craft up to more people. And once we have them hooked, we have a quilter for life! Quilters, for the most part, who’ll go on to improve their skills and buy patterns.

Freebies are also a useful marketing tool. I have a few simple patterns that I use to get people onto my newsletter list. (So it’s really not a freebie – it’s a swap; an email address for a pattern.) On my list they can get to know me and my designs better and decide if they’d like to purchase a pattern. They may also decide they don’t like my style of quilting and unsubscribe. No biggie. This type of try-before-you-buy marketing is not new – think of test driving cars or trying the cheese samples in the deli.

Some other points to ponder on free:

The mass dropping of free patterns by companies when a fabric line debuts to encourage fabric sales. Even if a designer is paid a fee to produce the pattern by the fabric company, is it likely to replace the revenue that the pattern would generate over the entirely of its life? (Anecdotally it would seem quilt shops don’t like these free patterns either – they’d rather sell a pattern to a shopper.)

Are all free patterns technically edited and of good quality?

How much time is needed to support those free patterns? I’ve had people email and ask me to resize my free patterns for them – without paying me for that work. Of course, I politely decline, but why do people expect that I would want to do this work for them for free? No doubt because they think if I’ve worked for free before (free pattern), I’d be happy to work for free again.

In conclusion…

Lots to read and lots to consider. If you’ve made it this far, you’re a legend and obviously care about quilting and the industry. Thank you for your support.

It’s always fun when someone you follow writes a book. It’s even more fun when someone you actually know writes one.

I’m so happy that my real-life friend Peta’s book is now available! Welcome to my stop on her book tour.

A Piece of Cake has 14 beautiful and easy-to-sew projects that use layer cake (10″) squares.

My 11 yr old was in need of a table-topper for her bedside table, to match her yellow log-cabin quilt. I handed her the book and told her to choose her favourite pattern (I was planning to adapt it to mini-size if she chose one of the full-size quilts). Lucky for me, she loved the Spin Pillow pattern, which meant very little size adjustment was required.

Together we chose some yellow (Karen Lewis) and light grey (Alison Glass) fabrics to match her quilt, and then she left me to it.

I love these Karen Lewis Blueberry Park fabrics – so saturated and with just enough pattern to keep them interesting, but not overpowered.

I sewed up the block very quickly, and swirled the centre seam to help it sit nicely.

I kept the border the same as the background fabric and reduced the width by about half an inch so the panel would fit my daughter’s bedside table.

I quilted this one with wavy lines using my walking foot and with only the seam lines as my guide. It’s such a therapeutic pattern to quilt – very relaxing!

And finally, I used a thin binding (my binding strips are only 2″ wide) in the darker mustard yellow.

I love how it turned out – very cheery and pretty, but understated as well. And best of all, my daughter loves it too. Phew.

The book tour is only just getting started – don’t forget to check in with all these lovely quilters to see more goodness from Peta:

This month I had my 10,000th reader sign up for my newsletter, thanks to ConvertKit*, the software I use to send my emails/newsletters. My first though when this happened was “Woah”. My second thought was “I’ve got to tell other crafters how they can do this, too!”

If you have a blog or are considering one, or if you’re thinking about starting an email newsletter then read on. I have plenty to tell you.

Like most people, I started my email list with Mailchimp. It was free, it was pretty and it was free. Did I mention it was free?

Mailchimp wasn’t as intuitive to use as I would’ve liked, but I muddled through and had an email sign-up box on the side bar of the blog by April 2014. I think it said “Sign Up for my Newsletter”. Rivetting stuff.

My very first email newsletter went out in June 2014 to 62 people, which seemed like a lot back then.

To encourage readers to sign up for my newsletter I had a free quilt pattern PDF linked to my Mailchimp sign-up email. Whenever someone confirmed their email address they received this free pattern automatically, which was pretty nifty. I didn’t have to sit by the computer and attach and email the file every time someone signed up.

In 2 years I managed to grow my list with this free pattern offer to well over 2000 subscribers.

The date was now April 2016 and I really needed a new email newsletter provider. Mailchimp was no longer free as I had over 2000 subscribers, plus it was starting to cramp my style.

I wanted to put an email sign-up box within a blog post, not just in my side bar. This was beyond my capabilities with Mailchimp (not to say it can’t be done, but I do not have coding skills).

And most importantly, I wanted to offer more than just one free pattern to my readers. I wanted to offer a free pattern or printable tutorial for EVERY blog post (or close to every post) that would send out automatically, with no action on my part. Again, I couldn’t do this with Mailchimp.

So I shopped around and made a PROs vs CONs list of all the email newsletter software out there. And, long story short, I chose ConvertKit*.

ConvertKit was created by a blogger who couldn’t find software to do what he wanted, so he made it himself.

The features I love in ConvertKit:

It’s easier (for me) to use than Mailchimp.

I can put sign-up boxes in my blog posts and have a different PDF attached to each one. Without a doubt, this has exploded my email list!

I can set up an automatic email series to send out based on different triggers. For instance, I have a 3-email “welcome series” that goes to everyone who signs up to my email list. This has really taken my understanding of my audience to a new level.

I can automatically have subscribers tagged according to an action they might take. For instance, if someone opts-in through my wholesale sign-up box, they get tagged with “Wholesale List”. Then, if I have an update just for wholesale customers, I can send it to only them. I can tag someone when they purchase one of my patterns (yes, ConvertKit “talks” to my SendOwl pattern purchase software, so cool) so I don’t have to send my “sale ending soon” emails to anyone who’s already purchased. Clever!

A really helpful FAQ/help section, with articles and videos. Their customer support (with real, live people!) is also well done and timely.

Statistics. Sometimes I like to get nerdy. I like to see how each of my individual sign-up boxes are performing:

And all my newsletter emails (called “Broadcasts” in ConvertKit):

And there are more layers to drill down into to see how things are performing, for those who like that sort of thing.

The benefits of ConvertKit for me have been:

Greater interaction with my readers. We all know blog commenting is dwindling – it’s hard to know if what you’re writing is striking a chord. My 3-email welcome series has been so good for introducing myself and the blog, and making sure readers find all the interesting stuff hiding in my archives. It also gives me the chance to ask if they have any quilty dilemmas I could help them with. From this I can gauge the topics and the level of detail my posts should have. I’ve also had some wonderful email replies from people just saying hello, telling me about themselves and showing me what they’re currently working on (always so much fun to see). Nancy, the truck driving quilter (she quilts in her truck!!) is amazing.

Better service for my readers. As I mentioned above, I can tag readers according to an action they may take. I don’t have to annoy people with further sales emails if they have already purchased. If you’ve already been through my welcome series, you shouldn’t ever see it again. If you haven’t opened an email in 90 days, I can send you an email asking if you’d like to be removed from the list so your inbox isn’t filled with email you don’t want to read. In the future, I could send out an email asking which of 2 subjects interests you the most, and based on the link you click you’ll receive an automatic email series on that subject and the option to purchase a pattern. Nice!

Achieving my email list goal 5 months early. As I mentioned, it took me 2 years to gather 2600ish subscribers with Mailchimp. I signed up for ConvertKit in April 2016 and doubled my list by the end of that year (5500 subscribers). For 2017 I decided to set a big goal – to reach 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. By crikey, I did it by July 21st, 2017.

Now, I would like to point out that I am not a Super Blogger. If you’ve followed me for a while you’ll know that I tend to put out blog posts every 2 weeks at best, every 2 months at worst. But the posts I do put out, more often than not, have a free download offer. People come to that post via Google or Pinterest or a link, and if they like what they see they pop in their email address and get the free PDF. Then they automatically get my welcome email series and we go from there. Every one of these posts collects email subscribers for me every day (and night), on autopilot. They don’t gather huge amounts of people, but because I have quite a few of them, which I’ve just built up over time (which anyone could do), the outcome is 4,500 subscribers in 7 months. In fact, today (3 days later) I’m already up to:

10, 106 – Wheeeeee! As an aside, when you hover your mouse over the bars (see below), they show you which sign-up is responsible for those subscribers. Cool.

I’m not doing anything very different since leaving Mailchimp except using ConvertKit* to offer multiple free PDFs. Remember those lessons on compounding interest in Economics class? Well, this is the same principle. If you put out a new post every 2 weeks or so with a sign-up box in it, they will start to bring in more and more subscribers. Every one of those posts lives on at your blog and continues to bring you new readers, who if you are lucky, will share their inbox with you.

I also went back to my old posts and updated all of them with free downloads. In some cases, the PDF was just a copy of the blog post itself, so not much work was required. I routinely have people ask if I have PDF versions of my posts as they like to save and print them to use at the sewing machine. This solves that need and brings in more subscribers at the same time. Win, win 🙂 If you’ve already got free patterns or tutorials on your blog, you could easily spend a few hours and add a free PDF download offer to those posts and get the compound interest effect working for you.

Email is where the party’s happening. People are spending less time reading blogs (unless your email directs them to your post) and only a small percentage of your Facebook or Instagram audience will see your posts. I don’t know about you, but I check my email every day. And I read every single thing I get. If you want to connect with your readers, their inbox is where you want to be. They will appreciate being up to date with everything you’re up to!

So, if you’re a quilter/sewist/crafter who is struggling to build your email list, you would benefit from having ConvertKit as your email software. We crafters already, naturally, have plenty of posts that are perfectly suited to having PDF download accompaniments – so why not take advantage of that to build your list?

I’m very happy to be an affiliate for ConvertKit* as it’s a product I use myself. If you think it might be a good fit for you, too, feel free to shoot me any questions you have via email. I’ve got plenty of experience using ConvertKit in a craft blog scenario and should be able to help.

ETA: I’ve got a screencast video here that shows you inside my ConvertKit account (the “back end” inside the software) and exactly how I use it.

Happy blogging, and may your lists be large 🙂

P.S. If you’re not already on my list and would like to see ConvertKit in action from a reader’s point of view, sign up via the boxes below (you can easily unsubscribe once you’ve seen how it works):

* As mentioned above, I’m an affiliate for ConvertKit, so these links are affiliate links. If you decide to use ConvertKit via one of these links, you will be helping to support this blog (thank you!) and my door will always be open for any questions you may have.

Unless stated otherwise, all content (text and photographs) belongs to Bonjour Quilts, so please do not use without permission. The use of a single photograph and a link back to the site is fine, for educational or informational purposes, but please don’t republish more than this in any form (digital or paper). Do not take my photographs and offer them for download (free or paid) on your website.